Thanks to the indomitable energy and the equally zealous and unscrupulous ability of the man who had directed her counsels during the greater part of the war, England alone came triumphant out of the strife.

She had won India forever; and, for some years at least, civilized America, almost in its entirety, obeyed her laws.

She had won what France had lost, not by superiority of arms, or even of generals, but by the natural and proper force of a free people, ably and liberally governed.
The position of France abroad, at the end of the Seven Years' War, was as painful as it was humiliating; her position at home was still more serious, and the deep-lying source of all the reverses which had come to overwhelm the French.

Slowly lessened by the faults and misfortunes of King Louis XIV.'s later years, the kingly authority, which had fallen, under Louis XV., into hands as feeble as they were corrupt, was ceasing to inspire the nation with the respect necessary for the working of personal power: public opinion was no longer content to accuse the favorite and the ministers; it was beginning to make the king responsible for the evils suffered and apprehended.

People waited in vain for a decision of the crown to put a stop to the incessantly renewed struggles between the Parliament and the clergy.